Communicating for a Better World Conference

I don't want people to engage; I want them to communicate, to build communities.

EU Ambassador Lambrinidis at Communicating for a Better World

How should the United Nations communicate to the world when its very purpose is being questioned? That was the starting point for Communicating for a Better World, a three-day conference at Columbia University and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. 

UN communicators, academics, diplomats, journalists, and designers spent three days exploring that question. The idea for the conference emerged from Dr. Stefan Tschauko of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs research, and it was organised by CUNY's Ralph Bunche together with co-organising partners, including the EU Delegation to the UN. Others included Columbia World Projects, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, the Sorensen Center for International Peace and Justice and the United Nations Association of the USA. It drew more than 35 partner institutions and over 330 submissions, of which 130 were presented as research, proposals, posters and videos. Panels focused on AI, information integrity, social media, branding and design, and communicating for peace. Daniel Prada, and Jelena Vujic from the EU Delegation, participated as speakers on information integrity and youth inclusion themes, and in the virtual opening session of the day 1. 

The conference officially opened at Columbia University on the evening of 21 October with keynotes from UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming, EU Ambassador Stavros Lambrinidis and Prof. Ian Hurd of Northwestern University. 

In his remarks, Ambassador Lambrinidis reminded the audience that the UN was built after the Second World War and the Holocaust on three pillars: peace and security, development, and human rights. Today, he said, people are not only asking whether the UN does its job well. "It is those fundamental normative pillars that are questioned." To show how closely those pillars are tied together, he recalled his time as EU Special Representative for Human Rights. Governments would ask him why he kept bringing up human rights when the talks were supposed to be about terrorism. He answered with questions of his own. "Why did the Taliban in Pakistan put a bullet in Malala's head when she was advocating for girls' education? Why did Boko Haram in Nigeria take hundreds of girls from schools, instead of bombing one more police barracks? Why does ISIS abduct, forcibly marry and rape so many Yazidi girls? What is so scary about smart girls for terrorists?" The answer, he said, is simple. "Smart girls become educated girls, and educated girls become empowered women. And empowering women changes and shifts the balance of power in any society." Terrorists want the opposite: weak societies, "with black holes of lack of control and power they can fill with their hatred and violence." 

Tell the good stories, and let others tell them. 

The UN has helped educate hundreds of millions of girls, with the EU among those putting money and political weight behind it. Yet those success stories are rarely shared. Focusing only on what has failed, the Ambassador warned, is "a huge communications mistake." And the UN should not always be the one telling them. 

He had a message for diplomats too. Every autumn, instead of spending weeks renegotiating the same resolutions agreed the year before, UN Member States should ask whether anything has changed on the ground. "No one, anywhere in the world, who is struggling to escape poverty or to avoid being beaten by her husband, cares whether gender equality is listed five times or four times in the resolution," he said. "They care about how you implement it." He also emphasized that social media is built to keep us angry and afraid, because that is what keeps us clicking. "Fear, anger and hatred are the death of multilateralism."

In closing, Ambassador Lambrinidis asked where communication is needed most. His answer: wherever it has broken down. "Between parties that don't talk to one another. Between regions. Between generations. Connecting with them is often the first step toward any agreement. It was the first step in 1945. And it will be the first step in every piece of work that still remains to be done." 

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